A wild ride, but Ben Mather and Rowena Fry take honours

TASMANIANS Rowena Fry and Ben Mather have taken out the Pure Tasmania Wildside MTB race for 2014 after yesterday's final day.

The 450 riders took advantage of a strong northerly tail wind and hard-packed sand to fly down Ocean Beach during the concluding stage of the event. Launceston's Mather hit the beach first and held off strong attacks from race leader Mark Tupalski (ACT) and former titleholder Adrian Jackson.

Riding alone to the finish, Mather kept his challengers off his wheel and finished one minute and 12 seconds ahead of Tupalksi for the stage.

This lead was enough to ensure victory by eight seconds, with Mather delighted to win his first Wildside title.

In a close tussle to the line, Western Australia's Jo Bennett won the final Hell's Gate stage by four seconds from Rowena Fry, but Fry's lead was sufficient to secure the win.

With a lead of nearly three minutes overall, Fry showed her strength across the range of terrain covered in Wildside in a very high quality women's field.

Two intrepid unicyclists tackled Wildside for the first time, with world No 6, Jamey Mossengren (NSW) taking out the inaugural title, finishing ahead of many two-wheeled competitors.

Having started the event on Saturday at Cradle Mountain at 5C, the dramatic change to 33C heat in the long Hells Gates stage provided an additional challenge to competitors.

After four days of racing on through the spectacular alpine country and rainforest of the West Coast, the 22-kilometre stage around Ocean Beach completed the journey from mountains to beach, with many competitors thrilled to have completed this iconic mountain-biking event.